Finally ‘Video Calling’ launches on WhatsApp!

Hello all, great news as I have been anticipating this for so long but WhatsApp are launching their video calling feature. Sourced via Tech Crunch: WhatsApp wants to be known as the international cross-platform FaceTime.

Today Facebook-owned chat service WhatsApp is officially launching video calling for its over 1 billion users worldwide on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

To use the new feature, WhatsApp users can hit the call button in the top right corner of a conversation, which will bring up an overlaid interstitial asking if you want to voice or video call the friend or family member you’re chatting with. To kick off the video call, you simply select the “video call” option from this screen.

During the call itself, you can switch between the forward-facing and rear camera, mute the call or press the red button to hang up: WhatsApp Launches Video Calling

It seems the user interface varies slightly on Android and iPhone in terms of where the picture-in-picture video feed is displayed, as well as the buttons’ size, lineup and placement:

WhatsApp already supports a number of standard features for communications apps, including group texting and voice calling. But the company says that video calling has remained one of its top feature requests from users.

With video calling, WhatsApp is belatedly catching up with a number of rivals, including Facebook’s own Messenger app, for example, as well as Skype, Apple’s FaceTime, Viber, LINE and Google’s recently launched Duo, to name a few.

Though a late entrant, WhatsApp still has a massive user base and the addition of the feature could help them from fleeing to other messaging and calling platforms. In addition, WhatsApp touts its cross-platform support as one of the reasons to use video calling in its app, instead of elsewhere.

“…we want to make these features available to everyone, not just those who can afford the most expensive new phones or live in countries with the best cellular networks,” the company said in its announcement, published today.

That’s a direct shot at things like FaceTime, which only works on Apple devices, as well as newer arrivals, like Google Duo, which only runs on later versions of iOS and Android (Jelly Bean and up, or iOS 9 and up).

So here’s to making life even easier for me and reducing on my calling costs (hey, every penny counts).